New years eve. Klye started the finished coats for the drywall while I frantically tried to get my computer working to play music for our new years eve party that night. He worked alone. I worked alone. Not very fun. Until the party. Started to get close to the end of the drywall. Things will start moving more quickly.

Nicole's dad helped me make the bottom portion of the front stage. Finally visible progress!

Ran projector wires. More drywall mud.

Lots of work but not much to show for it. More drywall work, I ran projector wires.

Last night before Christmas break. Finished the satellite, ethernet, and front speaker wires. Kyle started on drywall and Nicole helped with that (instead of helping me) since I'd been grouchy with her a few days earlier. It started snowing like crazy - we wound up with about 18 inches that night.

I started working on the wiring. Not much specific to report, just ran satellite and ethernet cables from the mechanical room to the rack location. Can't remember what else we did.

I worked most of the day alone on the rear platform with too little sleep. I finished the platform and installed tactile transducers in the floor of it. Because of the fatigue, I got angry at Nicole for no reason. I should have just stopped and taken a nap.

We took a trip to Home Depot to get can lights for the room and wood for the front platform. I figured out how to sandwich the tactile transducers between the top of the platform and a carrier piece. This turned out to be more complicated than I expected. I ran wires for the front 3 speakers. It was no fun fishing it behind the front wall and into the utility room before putting it through the ceiling to the back of the room. Kyle had a Fiberglas cable puller that made it much easier than the flexible fish tape I had. He made cut-outs for the can lights and started cutting out for the rack. I realized that I needed more speaker wire for the tactile transducers and couldn't believed I'd underestimated so grossly. The room was a total mess and Nicole started cleaning at the end of the evening. Things looked much better after that. We decided to call it an evening at about 7:30. I pulled my new Sony HS-51 out of the box and ran a long S-Video cable to a coffee table. We watched Collateral, which was much better than I expected — one I'd like to add to my collection.

I took my first real vacation day of the entire year today. I used up the rest of my vacation during a school-related trip to China this summer and it sure was nice to have a 3-day weekend. Nicole was off from work as well and we got started early on house-related projects. I worked on the platform again and though I would get the whole thing finished, but then realized that it would take more work than I expected with the rope lighting and tactile transducers. I decided to vibration isolate the top of the platfrom from the base so that the tactile transducers would be more effective; I used 1/2" thick pipe insulation. Kyle arrived aroud 6:00 and he and Nicole started pulling RG6 cable through the ceiling to the rack location. The soffit was about 90% complete at the end of the night. It seems like we worked all night but didn't have much to show for it.

Kyle and Nicole worked on the soffit most of the evening. This was my last night on campus for my MBA! So I went out with some classmates and had a couple of beers to celebrate. I wa surprised how much work they accomplished — they were still working when I got home at 10:45!